fC-NRLF 


THE  OLD  HUMANITIES  AND 

THE  NEW  SCIENCE 

•    • 
• 

PRESIDENTIAL  ADDRESS 

TO  THE  CLASSICAL  ASSOCIATION 

MAY  16,  1919 


THE  OLD  HUMANITIES 
AND  THE  NEW  SCIENCE  - 


BY 


/ 
SIR  WILLIAM  OSLER,  ST.,  M.D.,  F.R.S. 


WITH  INTRODUCTION  BY 

HARVEY  GUSHING,  M.D. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

The  Riverside  Press  Cambridge 

1920 


0 


COPYRIGHT,  1920,   BY  HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


7SC 


INTRODUCTION 

IN  writing  a  prefatory  note  to  an  Amer- 
ican reprint  of  this  notable  address  there 
are  three  things  to  consider — the  writer, 
his  subject,  and  the  occasion.  The  greatly 
beloved  author  had  a  multitude  of  friends 
in  all  lands,  and  far  abler  pens  have  written 
much  concerning  himduring  the  past  twelve 
months.  The  subject  is  one  of  no  less  mo- 
ment on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  than  to  those 
in  older  countries  who  concern  themselves 
with  scholarship  and  education,  though 
here  the  classicists  are  having  a  particularly 
hard  struggle  to  retain  in  our  academies, 
schools,  and  colleges  a  proper  footing  for 
the  ancient  languages  and  learning  termed 
' '  the  humanities. ' '  The  circumstances  un- 
der which  the  address  was  given  are  less 
familiar  in  this  country  than  the  author 
and  his  subject,  for  we  as  yet  have  no  cor- 


415756 


[  vi  ] 

responding  organization,  or  at  least  none 
with  such  an  ambitious  programme.  Con- 
sequently it  is  appropriate  that  this  note 
should  dwell  chiefly  upon  the  occasion. 

The  Classical  Association,  composed  of 
a  large  body  of  university  men,  teachers, 
and  schoolmasters,  with  local  branches  in 
several  places  in  Great  Britain  and  her  col- 
onies, was  established  in  1904  with  this 
object : 

To  promote  the  development  and  maintain  the 
well-being  of  classical  studies  and  in  particular : 

(a)  To  impress  upon  public  opinion  the  claim  of 
such  studies  to  an  eminent  place  in  the  national 
scheme  of  education ; 

(b)  To  improve  the  practice  of  classical  teaching 
by  free  discussion  of  its  scope  and  methods; 

(c)  To  encourage  investigation  and  call  attention 
to  new  discoveries; 

(d)  To  create  opportunities  for  friendly  inter- 
course and  co-operation  among  all  lovers  of 
classical  learning  in  this  country. 

That  Sir  William  Osier  should  have  been 
chosen  to  preside  over  such  an  assembly  of 


[  vii  ] 

British  scholars  is  no  matter  for  surprise, 
for  though  a  humanist  in  the  broad  sense 
of  the  term  as  a  student  of  human  affairs 
and  human  nature,  rather  than  of  Latin  and 
Greek ,  he  at  the  same  time  was  a  wide  reader 
with  a  "relish for  knowledge,"  successful 
not  only  in  its  quest  in  many  fields  beyond 
that  of  his  chosen  profession,  but  particu- 
larly so  in  his  ability  to  hand  his  literary 
gleanings  on  to  others  in  a  new  and  attrac- 
tive form.  Nevertheless,  the  presidency  of 
the  Classical  Association,  considering  the 
avowed  objects  of  this  body,  was  a  most  sig- 
nal honour  in  view  of  his  reputation  prima- 
rily as  a  scientist  and  teacher  of  medicine. 
His  immediate  predecessor,  the  Profes- 
sor of  Greek  at  Christ  Church,  opened  his 
presidential  address  of  the  year  before  with 
these  words : 

It  is  the  general  custom  of  this  Association  to 
choose  as  its  President  alternately  a  classical  schol- 
ar and  a  man  of  wide  eminence  outside  the  classics. 


[  viii  ] 

Next  year  you  are  to  have  a  man  of  science,  a  great 
physician  who  is  also  famous  in  the  world  of  learn- 
ing and  literature.  Last  year  you  had  a  statesman, 
who,  though  a  statesman,  is  also  a  great  scholar 
and  man  of  letters,  a  sage  and  counsellor  in  the 
antique  mould,  of  world-wide  fame  and  unique 
influence. 

Thus,  though  in  himself  sufficiently  repre- 
sentative of  humanistic  culture,  Osier  was 
in  this  strict  sense  an  alternate,  and  among 
the  fourteen  earlier  Presidents  of  the  Asso- 
ciation three  had  like  himself  been  Fellows 
of  the  Royal  Society,  which  long  since  had 
abandoned  even  the  pretence  of  concern- 
ing itself  with  classical  studies  which  had 
been  the  very  basis  of  the  Revival  of  Learn- 
ing. 

The  list  of  Presidents  since  the  founda- 
tion of  the  Association  may  be  a  matter  of 
interest  to  those  in  this  country  who  may 
not  have  been  aware  of  the  existence  and 
purposes  of  this  organization  of  British 
scholars : 


[ix] 

1904.  The  Right  Hon.  Sir  R.  H.  Collins,  M.A., 
LL.D.,  D.C.L.,  Master  of  the  Rolls. 

1905.  The  Right  Hon.  the  Earl  of  Halsbury, 
D.C.L.,  F.R.S.,  Lord  Chancellor. 

1906.  The  Right  Hon.  Lord  Curzon  of  Kedles- 
ton,  G.C.S.I.,  G.C.I.E.,  D.C.L.,  F.R.S. 

1907.  S.  H.Butcher,  Esq.,  M.P.,Litt.D.,D.Litt., 
LL.D. 

1908.  The  Right  Hon.  H.  H.  Asquith,  M.P., 
K.C.,  D.C.L.,  Prime  Minister. 

1 909.  TheRightHon.theEarlofCromer,G.C.B., 
O.M.,  K.C.S.I.,  LL.D. 

1910.  Sir  Archibald   Geikie,  K.C.B.,  D.C.L., 
LL.D.,  Ph.D.,  President  of  the  Royal  So- 
ciety. 

1911.  The  Right  Rev.  Edward  Lee  Hicks,  D.D., 
Lord  Bishop  of  Lincoln. 

1912.  The  Very  Rev.  Henry  Montagu  Butler, 
D.D.,  D.C.L.,  LL.D.,  Master  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge. 

1913.  Sir  Frederic  G.  Kenyon,  K.C.B.,  D.Litt., 
F.B.A.,  Head  of  the  British  Museum. 

1914.  Professor   William   Ridgeway,  Litt.D., 
LL.D.,  Sc.D.,  F.B.A.,  Disney  Professor 
of  Archaeology,  Cambridge. 

1915.  Sir  W.    B.   Richmond,   K.C.B.,  R.A., 
D.C.L. 


[x] 

1916.  The  Right  Hon.  Viscount  Bryce,  O.M., 
D.C.L.,  LL.D.,  P.B.A.,  F.R.S. 

1917.  Professor  Gilbert  Murray,  LL.D.,  D.Litt., 
F.B.A.,  F.R.S.L.,  Christ  Church,  Oxford. 

As  reported  in  the  Annual  Proceedings 
of  the  Association,  Professor  Murray  at  the 
meeting  in  1918,  in  nominating  his  succes- 
sor, spoke  of  him  as  a  man,  "who  is  not 
only  one  of  the  most  eminent  physicians  in 
the  world,  but  represents  in  a  peculiar  way 
the  learned  physician  who  was  one  of  the 
marked  characters  of  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries,  and  stands  for  a  type 
of  culture  which  the  Classical  Association 
does  not  wish  to  see  die  out  of  the  world  — 
the  culture  of  a  man  who,  while  devoting 
himself  to  his  special  science,  keeps  never- 
theless a  broad  basis  of  interest  in  letters  of 
all  kinds." 

In  seconding  this  proposal,  Sir  Frederic 
Kenyon  pointed  out  that  it  had  come  at  a 
very  appropriate  time  in  the  work  of  the  As- 


[xi] 

sociation,  for:  "  During  this  last  year  our 
main  activity  has  been  directed  towards  get- 
ting representatives  of  Natural  Science  and 
of  the  Humanities  to  work  together,  on  the 
principle  that  those  subjects  never  should 
be  in  conflict  with  one  another,  but  merely 
in  friendly  competition.  Both  are  equally  es- 
sential for  a  liberal  education.  It  is  a  contin- 
uation and  a  symbol  of  that  policy  that  we 
should  ask  Sir  William  Osier  to  become  our 
President,  and  that  he  should  have  accept- 
ed cordially  and  readily,  as  he  did.  He  is 
eminent  as  a  man  of  science,  is  President  of 
the  Bibliographical  Society,  and  represents 
scholarship  in  medicine  in  its  best  form." 
It  is  quite  possible  that  these  last  remarks 
may  have  suggested  to  the  succeeding  Pres- 
ident an  appropriate  topic  for  his  address, 
for  he  told  the  writer  a  few  months  later  that 
he  planned  to  talk  on  Science  and  the  Hu- 
manities. He  was  already  turning  the  mat- 
ter over  in  his  mind,  but  where  he  found 


time  or  inclination  to  write  the  address  it  is 
difficult  to  imagine. 

Staggered  by  the  loss  of  his  son,  an  only 
child,  who  had  fallen  in  action  near  St.  Ju- 
lien  during  the  Passchendaele  battles  in  Sep- 
tember the  year  before,  his  days  occupied 
with  a  succession  of  duties  in  connection 
with  the  war,  his  household  filled  as  always 
with  friends  and  visitors  innumerable,  and 
every  young  American  or  Canadian  in  serv- 
ice in  England  gravitating  there,  eager 
above  all  things  to  further  the  progress  of 
the  elaborate  catalogue  of  his  unique  and 
valuable  collection  of  books,  he  nevertheless 
set  himself  to  prepare  this,  one  of  his  most 
brilliant  and  what  proved  to  be  his  last  for- 
mal address. 

The  meeting  of  the  Association  was  to 
be  held  in  Oxford,  the  bed-rock  of  classical 
learning  —  the  only  place,  it  seems,  where 
the  word  ' '  humanism ' '  in  its  narrow  sense 
still  survives  in  modern  university  termi- 


nology  as  that  part  of  the  curriculum  known 
as  Litterse  Humaniares.  As  was  characteris- 
tic of  his  methods,  the  mere  address  itself 
did  not  suffice,  but  he  prepared  for  the 
occasion  in  other  ways.  Thus  he  collected 
from  the  various  Oxford  colleges  and  placed 
on  exhibition  an  array  of  historical  objects 
illustrating  the  important  part  Oxford  had 
once  played  in  science  and  natural  philoso- 
phy in  days  antedating  the  Royal  Society 
which  had  its  seeds  of  origin  there.  In  ad- 
dition, and  as  a  possible  offset  to  this,  he 
exhibited  from  his  own  collection  of  books 
those  volumes  which  constituted  in  their 
original  editions  the  outstanding  classics  in 
Science  and  Medicine.  A  small  pamphlet 
concerning  them  reads  as  follows : 

Faced  with  a  bewildering  variety  and  ever- 
increasing  literature,  how  is  the  hard-pressed  stu- 
dent to  learn  — 

1 .  The  evolution  of  knowledge  in  any  subject ; 

2.  The  life  and  work  of  the  men  who  made  the 
original  contributions  ? 


So  far  as  concerns  Science  and  Medicine,  an 
attempt  is  made  to  answer  the  question  by  the  col- 
lection of  a  Bibliotheca  Prima,  examples  from 
which  are  here  shown.  The  idea  is  to  have  in  a 
comparatively  small  number  of  works  the  essential 
literature  grouped  about  the  men  of  the  first  rank, 
arranged  in  chronological  order. 

I  have  put  out  the  editiones principes  of  twenty 
of  such  works.  The  fundamental  contribution  may 
be  represented  by  a  great  Aldine  edition,  e.g.  Aris- 
totle, by  the  brief  communication  such  as  that  of 
Darwin  and  Wallace  in  the  Proceedings  of  the 
Linnean  Society,  1858,  or  by  a  three-page  pam- 
phlet of  Roentgen.  From  the  card  lists  of  Galen, 
Hippocrates,  Vesalius,  and  Harvey,  those  inter- 
ested will  see  the  aim  and  scope  of  the  collection. 

The  works  on  exhibition  are : 


Plato 

1513 

Averrhoes 

1473 

Hippocrates 
Aristotle 

1526 
1495-98 

Copernicus 
Vesalius 

1543 
1543 

Theophrastus 
Galen 

1483 
1525 

Agricola 
Gilbert 

1556 
160O 

Dioscorides 

1499 

Bacon 

162O 

Celsus 

1478 

Galileo 

1632 

Plotinus 
Rhazes 
Avicenna  1486 

1492 
1476 
(not  ed.  pr.) 

Harvey 

Descartes 
Newton 

1628 
1637 
1687 

[xv] 

Though  it  is  hardly  pertinent  to  this  in- 
troductory note,  the  temptation  is  strong  to 
dwell  further  on  the  treasures  of  his  library. 
These  mentioned  above  were  but  samples 
from  the  Bibliotheca  Prima,  and  the  superb 
collection,  with  copious  notes  on  each  sepa- 
rate item,  is  further  subdivided  into  some 
seven  sections  —  Bibliotheca  Secunda,  his- 
torica,  biographica,  literaria,  the  incunab- 
ulas,  and  so  on. 

He  was  for  seven  years  President  of  the 
Bibliographical  Society  and  as  great  a  lover 
of  books  as  of  men,  but  it  should  be  borne 
in  mind  that  his  library  was  being  collected 
and  catalogued,  not  as  a  series  of  treasures 
by  reason  of  their  rarity,  but  were  regard- 
ed as  instruments  for  the  advancement  of 
knowledge,  and  with  this  end  in  view  the 
collection  was  bequeathed  to  McGill  Uni^ 
versity. 

By  good  fortune,  letters  which  give  in- 
teresting descriptions  of  the  effect  of  the 


address  have  been  received  from  two  dis- 
tinguished members  of  Sir  William's  au- 
dience, one  of  them  an  eminent  classical 
scholar,  the  other  an  eminent  scientist.  Sir 
Frederic  Kenyon  writes  that : 

The  delivery  of  Sir  William  Osier's  address 
was  a  very  memorable  occasion.  As  can  be  seen 
by  those  who  read  it,  it  was  full  of  learning,  of 
humour,  of  feeling,  of  eloquence,  and  it  contained 
suggestions  of  real  weight  with  regard  to  the  inter- 
connection of  science  and  the  humanities.  But  it 
gained  much  in  delivery  from  the  personality  of 
the  speaker.  No  one  could  hear  it  without  being 
impressed  by  his  width  of  outlook,  by  his  easy 
mastery  of  great  tracts  of  literature  and  learning, 
by  his  all-embracing  humanity  in  the  widest  sense 
of  the  term.  I  hope  it  made  many  students  of  sci- 
ence anxious  to  extend  their  knowledge  of  classical 
literature ;  I  know  it  made  one  student  of  the  clas- 
sics wish  that  he  had  a  wider  knowledge  of  natural 
science.  Osier  himself  was  a  well-nigh  perfect  ex- 
ample of  the  union  of  science  and  the  humanities, 
which  to  some  of  us  is  the  ideal  of  educational 
progress;  and  his  address  embodied  the  whole 
spirit  of  this  ideal. 


[  xvii  ] 

Professor  William  H.  Welch  has  given 
the  following  account : 

Most  fortunately  for  me  my  last  visit  to  the 
Osiers'  in  Oxford  happened  to  be  on  Friday,  May 
16,  1919,  when  Osier  delivered  his  presidential 
address  before  the  Classical  Association. 

Of  the  many  honours  which  came  to  Osier  few 
gave  him  so  great  pleasure,  as  well  as  surprise,  as 
his  election  to  the  presidency  of  the  British  Classi- 
cal Association.  Thiswas  arecognition,  not  merely 
of  his  sympathetic  interest  in  classical  studies  and 
intimate  association  with  classical  scholars,  but 
also  of  his  mastery  of  certain  phases  of  the  subject, 
especially  the  bibliographical  and  historical  sides, 
and  the  relation  of  the  work  and  thought  of  classi- 
cal antiquity  to  the  development  of  medicine,  sci- 
ence, and  culture.  There  have  been  physicians, 
especially  in  England,  well  known  for  their  attain- 
ments as  classical  scholars,  but  I  am  not  aware  that 
since  Linacre  there  has  come  to  a  member  of  the 
medical  profession  distinction  in  this  field  com- 
parable to  Osier's  election  to  the  presidency  of  the 
British  Classical  Association. 

Osier  told  me  that  he  had  never  given  so  much 
time  and  thought  to  the  preparation  of  an  address 
as  he  did  to  this  one.  The  occasion  and  the  whole 


[  xviii  ] 

setting  were  to  me  most  interesting  and  impres- 
sive. At  noon  the  audience  of  distinguished  schol- 
ars and  guests  assembled  in  the  "  Divinity  Room," 
the  most  beautiful  assembly  room  in  Oxford.  At 
one  end  of  the  hall  the  Vice- Chancellor  of  the 
University  presided  and  halfway  down  one  of  the 
sides  was  the  high  seat  of  the  orator.  The  distin- 
guished company,  the  brightly  coloured  academic 
gowns  and  hoods,  the  traditional  ceremonies  for 
such  an  occasion  in  Oxford,  the  figure  of  Osier  him- 
self, the  charm  and  interest  of  the  address  and  its  cor- 
dial appreciation  and  reception  by  the  audience, 
all  combined  to  make  a  scene  of  brilliancy  and  de- 
light which  I  shall  always  carry  in  my  memory. 

At  the  close  of  the  address  the  vote  of  thanks 
was  moved  by  Sir  Herbert  Warren,  the  President 
of  Magdalen  College,  who  described  Osier  as  the 
modern  Galen,  and  was  seconded  by  Sir  John  Bar- 
ran,  the  member  of  Parliament  from  Leeds,  in 
felicitous  words  of  discriminating  praise  of  the 
President's  address.  The  audience  responded  most 
enthusiastically. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  hour  which  I  spent  with 
Osier  just  before  the  address,  in  inspecting  the  won- 
derful collection  of  scientific  instruments  of  his- 
torical interest  which  Mr.  Gunther  had  assembled 
at  Osier's  request  from  the  various  colleges  at  Ox- 


[xix] 

ford,  especially  from  Merton,  the  old  home  of 
science.  An  interesting  descriptive  catalogue  of  the 
collection  had  been  prepared.  With  what  delight 
Osier  showed  me  and  told  me  the  histories  and  as- 
sociations of  the  astrolabes,  armillary  spheres,  or- 
reries, telescopes,  lenses,  microscopes,  books,  etc., 
which  he  had  caused  to  be  gathered  together  in 
connection  with  the  meeting  of  the  Classical 
Association !  You  will  recognize  a  characteristic 
touch  and  thought  of  Osier  in  arranging  for 
such  an  original  exhibit  to  interest  a  meeting  of 
scholars. 

When  not  long  after  the  address  I  said  good- 
bye to  Osier  I  little  thought  that  it  was  to  be  our 
final  parting,  but  I  rejoice  to  have  been  with  him 
then^and  to  remember  him  as  I  saw  him  last  on 
that  triumphal  day. 

Thus,  though  from  first  to  last  his  heart 
was  wrapped  up  in  his  profession  and  its 
science,  his  mind  was  open  toother  things, 
and  his  confession  that  the  Religio  Medici 
was  the  second  book  he  ever  purchased  and 
that  the  particular  copy  had  always  re- 
mained at  his  bedside  is  not  without  signif- 
icance. He  lived  to  prove  himself,  not  only 


[XX] 

a  worthy  disciple  of  those  scholars  of  the 
Renascence  who  interested  themselves  in 
natural  philosophy,  but  also  of  those  who 
were  devotees  of  the  ancient  languages  and 
literature.  But  Sir  William  Osier  was  a  man 
first  —  a  physician  and  scholar  afterward; 
and  beneath  his  high  spirits,  his  love  of  fun, 
lay  an  infinite  compassion  and  tenderness 
toward  his  humankind.  ' '  Write  me  as  one 
who  loves  his  fellow-men."  And  upon  few 
men  has  such  a  measure  of  admiration,  af- 
fection, and  love  been  bestowed  in  return. 
These  things  he  bore  without  pride,  as  he 
bore  his  great  success  in  life  with  humility. 
On  July  12, 1919,  less  than  two  months 
after  the  address  was  delivered,  he  attained 
his  seventieth  year,  and  was  presented  with 
two  volumes  containing  sixty-seven  orig- 
inal "Contributions  to  Medical  and  Bio- 
logical Research"  written  in  his  honour. 
In  addition  to  this,  tributes  were  showered 
upon  him  from  all  sides,  and  his  work,  char- 


[xxi  ] 

acter,  and  accomplishments  became  the 
subject  of  papers  innumerable.  It  was  an 
extraordinary  outburst,  one  of  those  excep- 
tional occurrences  when  people  do  not  wait 
for  the  passing — in  this  case  so  near  at  hand 
-to  say,  what  is  in  their  hearts  to  say,  of 
the  life  of  a  friend.  A  brief  characterization 
of  him  from  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  Brit- 
ish scholars  was  quoted  early  in  this  note, 
and  it  may  be  fitting  to  close  with  some  lines 
by  the  dean  of  American  classical  schol- 
ars, Basil  L.  Gildersleeve,  written  for  what 
proved  to  be  his  last  birthday: 

ON  A  PORTRAIT  OF  SIR  WILLIAM 
OSLER,  BART. 

William  the  Fowler,  Guillaume  TOiseleur ! 
I  love  to  call  him  thus,  and  when  I  scan 
The  counterfeit  presentment  of  the  man, 
I  feel  his  net,  I  hear  his  arrows  whir. 
Make  at  the  homely  surname  no  demur, 
Nor  on  a  nomination  lay  a  ban 
With  which  a  line  of  sovran  lords  began, 
Henry  the  Fowler  was  first  Emperor. 


[  xxii  ] 

Asclepius  was  Apollo's  chosen  son, 
But  to  that  son  he  never  lent  his  bow, 
Nor  did  Hephaestus  teach  to  forge  his  net ; 
Both  secrets  hath  Imperial  Osier  won. 
His  winged  words  straight  to  their  quarry  go. 
All  hearts  are  holden  by  his  meshes  yet. 

HARVEY  GUSHING 

Brooklme 

February  18,  192O 


THE  OLD  HUMANITIES  AND 
THE  NEW  SCIENCE 


THE  OLD  HUMANITIES  AND 
THE  NEW  SCIENCE 

I 

EARLY  in  the  sixteenth  century  a  liter- 
ary joke  sent  inextinguishable  laugh- 
ter through  the  learned  circles  of  Europe. 
The  Epistolse  Obscurontm  Vironim  is  great 
literature,  to  which  I  refer  for  two  reasons 
—  its  standard  is  an  exact  gauge  of  my 
scholarship,  and  had  Magister  Nostrandus 
Ortuinus  Gratiusof  Cologne,  to  whom  most 
of  the  letters  are  addressed,  been  asked  to 
join  that  wicked  Erfurt  Circle,  he  could  not 
have  been  more  surprised  than  I  was  to  re- 
ceive a  gracious  invitation  to  preside  over 
this  gathering  of  British  scholars.  I  felt  to 
have  been  sailing  under  false  colours  to 
have  ever,  by  pen  or  tongue,  suggested  the 
possession  of  even  the  traditional  small  Lat- 


in  and  less  Greek.  Relieved  by  the  assur- 
ance that  in  alternate  years  the  qualification 
of  your  President  was  an  interest  in  educa- 
tion and  literature,  I  gladly  accepted,  not, 
however,  without  such  anticipatory  qualms 
as  afflict  an  amateur  at  the  thought  of  ad- 
dressing a  body  of  experts.  Not  an  edu- 
cated man  in  the  Oxford  sense,  yet  faint 
memories  of  the  classics  linger  —  the  re- 
sult of  ten  years  of  such  study  as  lads  of 
my  generation  pursued,  memories  best  ex- 
pressed in  Tom  Hood's  lines  : 

"  The  weary  tasks  I  used  to  con ! 
The  hopeless  leaves  I  wept  upon ! 
Most  fruitless  leaves  to  me !  " 

In  a  life  of  teaching  and  practice,  a  mere 
picker-up  of  learning's  crumbs  is  made  to 
realize  the  value  of  the  humanities  in  sci- 
ence not  less  than  in  general  culture. 

To  have  a  Professor  of  Medicine  in  this 
Chair  gives  to  the  Oxford  meeting  an  ap- 
propriate renaissance — shall  we  say  medi- 


[*] 

aeval  ?  —  flavour,  and  one  may  be  pardoned 
the  regret  that  the  meeting  is  not  being  held 
in  May,  1519,  to  have  had  the  pleasure  of 
listening  to  an  address  from  a  real  Oxford 
scholar-physician,  an  early  teacher  of  Greek 
in  this  University,  and  the  founder  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Physicians,  whose  Rudi- 
menta  Grammatices  and  De  Emendata  Struc- 
tura  Latini  Sermonis  upheld  for  a  genera- 
tion, on  the  Continent  at  least,  the  reputation 
of  English  scholarship.  These  noble  walls, 
themselves  an  audience  —  indeed,  most 
appreciative  of  audiences — have  storied 
memories  of  Linacre's  voice,  and  the  basis 
of  the  keen  judgment  of  Erasmus  may  have 
been  formed  by  intercourse  with  him  in  this 
very  school.  In  those  happy  days,  to  know 
Hippocrates  and  Galen  was  to  know  disease 
and  to  be  qualified  to  practise  ;  and  my  pro- 
fession looks  back  in  grateful  admiration  to 
such  great  medical  humanists  as  Linacre 
and  Caius  and  Rabelais.  Nor  can  I  claim 


[6] 

to  speak  for  pure  science,  some  salt  of  which 

***• 

remains  from  early  association,  and  from  a 

lifelong  attempt  to  correlate  with  art  a  sci- 
ence which  makes  medicine,  I  was  going 
to  say  the  only  —  but  it  is  more  civil  to  say 
the  most  — progressive  of  the  learned  pro- 
fessions. 

To  have  lived  right  through  an  epoch, 
matched  only  by  two  in  the  story  of  the 
race,  to  have  shared  in  its  long  struggle,  to 
have  witnessed  its  final  victory  (and  in  my 
own  case,  to  be  left  I  trust  with  wit  enough 
to  realize  its  significance)  —  to  have  done 
this  has  been  a  wonderful  privilege.  To 
have  outgrown  age-old  theories  of  man  and 
of  nature,  to  have  seen  west  separated  from 
east  in  the  tangled  skein  of  human  thought, 
to  have  lived  in  a  world  re-making  —  these 
are  among  the  thrills  and  triumphs  of  the 
Victorian  of  my  generation.  To  a  child- 
hood and  youth  came  echoes  of  the  con- 
troversy that  Aristarchus  began,  Coperni- 


cus  continued,  and  Darwin  ended,  that  put 
the  microcosm  into  line  with  the  macro- 
cosm ,  and  for  the  golden  age  of  Eden  substi- 
tuted the  tellus  dura  of  Lucretius.  Think  of 
the  Cimmerian  darkness  out  of  which  our 
generation  has,  at  any  rate,  blazed  a  path  ! 
Picture  the  mental  state  of  a  community 
which  could  produce  ''Omphalos:  An  At- 
tempt to  untie  the  Geological  Knot"!1 
I  heard  warm  clerical  discussions  on  its 
main  thesis,  that  the  fossils  were  put  into 
the  earth's  strata  to  test  men's  faith  in  the 
Mosaic  account  of  the  creation,  and  our 
Professor  of  Natural  Theology  lectured  se- 
riously upon  it !  The  intellectual  unrest  of 
those  days  wrapped  many  in  that '  'dy vine 
cloude  of  unknowynge,"  by  which  happy 
phrase  Brother  Herp  designates  mediaeval 
mysticism;  and  not  a  bad  thing  for  a  young 
man  to  live  through,  as  sufficient  infection 
usually  remains  to  enable  him  to  under- 

*  By  the  distinguished  naturalist  Philip  Henry  Gosse. 


[8] 

stand,  if  not  to  sympathize  with,  mental 
states  alien  or  even  hostile. 

An  Age  of  Force  followed  the  final  sub- 
jugation of  Nature.  The  dynamo  replaced 
the  steam-engine,  radiant  energy  revealed 
the  hidden  secrets  of  matter,  to  the  con- 
quest of  the  earth  was  added  the  control  of 
the  air  and  the  mastery  of  the  deep.  Nor 
was  it  only  an  Age  of  Force.  Never  before 
had  man  done  so  much  for  his  brother,  the 
victory  over  the  powers  of  Nature  meant 
also  glorious  victories  of  peace ;  pestilences 
were  checked,  the  cry  of  the  poor  became 
articulate,  and  to  help  the  life  of  the  sub- 
merged half  became  a  sacred  duty  of  the 
other.  How  full  we  were  of  the  pride  of  life ! 
In  1910  at  Edinburgh  I  ended  an  address 
on  "Man's  Redemption  of  Man"  with 
the  well-known  lines  of  Shelley  beginning, 
4  'Happiness  and  Science  dawn  though  late 
)  upon  the  earth."  And  now,  having  sur- 
vived the  greatest  war  in  history,  and  a 


[9] 

great  victory,  with  the  wreckage  of  medi- 
aeval autonomy  to  clear  up,  our  fears  are 
lest  we  may  fail  to  control  the  fretful  forces 
of  Caliban,  and  our  hopes  are  to  rebuild  Je- 
rusalem in  this  green  and  pleasant  land. 

Never  before  in  its  long  evolution  has  the 
race  realized  its  full  capacity.  Our  fathers 
have  told  us,  and  we  ourselves  have  known, 
of  glorious  sacrifices;  but  the  past  four 
years  have  exhausted  in  every  direction  the 
possibilities  of  human  effort.  And,  as  usual, 
among  the  nations  the  chief  burden  has 
fallen  on  that  weary  Titan ,  the  Motherland, 

''Bearing  on  shoulders  immense, 

.  Atlantean,  the  load 
Well-nigh  not  to  be  borne 
Of  the  too  vast  orb  of  her  fate." 

Not  alone  did  she  furnish  the  sinews  of 
war,  but  she  developed  a  spirit  that  made 
defeat  impossible. 

No  wronder  war  has  advocates,  to  plead 
the  heroic  clash  of  ideals,  the  purging  of  a 


nation's  dross  in  the  fire  of  suffering  and 
sacrifice,  and  the  welding  in  one  great 
purpose  of  a  scattered  people.  Even  Mon- 
taigne, sanest  of  men,  called  it  "the  great- 
est and  most  magnificent  of  human  ac- 
tions"; and  the  glamours  of  its  pride, 
pomp,  and  circumstance  still  captivate.  But 
there  are  other  sides  which  we  should  face 
without  shrinking.  Why  dwell  on  the  hor- 
rors such  as  we  doctors  and  nurses  have  had 
to  see?  Enough  to  say  that  war  blasts  the 
soul,  and  in  this  great  conflict  the  finer 
sense  of  humanity  has  been  shocked  to 
paralysis  by  the  helplessness  of  our  civi- 
lization and  the  futility  of  our  religion  to 
stem  a  wave  of  primitive  barbarism.  Black 
as  are  the  written  and  unwritten  pages  of 
history,  the  concentrated  and  prolonged 
martyrdom  surpasses  anything  man  has 
yet  had  to  endure.  What  a  shock  to  the 
proud  and  mealy-mouthed  Victorian  who 
had  begun  to  trust  that  Love  was  creation's 


[11  ] 

final  law,  forgetting  that  Egypt  and  Bab- 
ylon are  our  contemporaries  and  of  yester- 
day in  comparison  with  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  years  since  the  cave-dwellers 
left  their  records  on  walls  and  bones.  In  the 
mystic  shadow  of  the  Golden  Bough,  and 
swayed  by  the  emotions  of  our  savage  an- 
cestors, we  stand  aghast  at  the  revelation 
of  the  depth  and  ferocity  of  primal  passions 
which  reveal  the  unchangeableness  of  hu- 
man nature* 

When  the  wild  beast  of  Plato's  dream 
becomes  a  waking  reality,  and  a  herd- 
emotion  of  hate  sweeps  a  nation  off  its  feet, 
the  desolation  that  follows  is  wider  than 
that  in  France  and  Belgium,  wider  even 
than  the  desolation  of  grief,  and  something 
worse  —  the  hardened  heart,  the  lie  in  the 
soul  —  so  graphically  described  in  Book  II 
of  the  "Republic" — that  forces  us  to  do 
accursed  things,  and  even  to  defend  them ! 
I  refer  to  it  because,  as  professors,  we  have 


[   12] 

been  accused  of  sinning  against  the  light. 
Of  course  we  have.  Over  us,  too,  the  wave 
swept,  but  I  protest  against  the  selection  of 
us  for  special  blame.  The  other  day,  in  an 
address  on ' c  The  Comradeship  of  Letters '  * 
at  Turin,  President  Wilson  is  reported  to 
have  said:  "It  is  one  of  the  great  griefs  of 
this  war  that  the  universities  of  the  Cen- 
tral Empires  used  the  thoughts  of  science 
to  destroy  mankind;  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
universities  of  these  states  to  redeem  science 
from  this  disgrace  and  to  show  that  the 
pulse  of  humanity  beats  in  the  classroom, 
and  that  there  are  sought  out  not  the  secrets 
of  death  but  the  secrets  of  life."  A  pious 
and  worthy  wish !  But  once  in  war  a  nation 
mobilizes  every  energy,  and  to  say  that 
science  has  been  prostituted  in  discovering 
means  of  butchery  is  to  misunderstand  the 
situation.  Slaughter,  wholesale  and  unre- 
stricted, is  what  is  sought,  and  to  accom- 
plish this  the  discoveries  of  the  sainted 


[   13] 

Faraday  and  of  the  gentle  Dalton  are  util- 
ized to  the  full,  and  to  their  several  nations 
scientific  men  render  this  service  freely,  if 
not  gladly.  That  the  mental  attitude  en- 
gendered by  science  is  apt  to  lead  to  a  gross 
materialism  is  a  vulgar  error.  Scientific 
men,  in  mufti  or  in  uniform,  are  not  more 
brutal  than  their  fellows,  and  the  utilization 
of  their  discoveries  in  warfare  should  not  be 
a  greater  reproach  to  them  than  is  our  joy- 
ous acceptance  of  their  success. 

What  a  change  of  heart  after  the  appall- 
ing experience  of  the  first  gassing  in  1915 ! 
Nothing  more  piteously  horrible  than  the 
sufferings  of  the  victims  has  ever  been  seen 
in  warfare.1  Surely  we  could  not  sink  to 
such  barbarity !  Is  thy  servant  a  dog  ?  But 
martial  expediency  soon  compelled  the 
Allies  to  enlist  the  resources  of  chemistry; 
the  instruction  of  our  enemies  was  soon 
bettered ,  and  before  the  Armistice  there  were 

1  I  am  sorry  to  have  seen  Sargent's  picture  "Gassed  "  in  this 
year's  Academy.  It  haunts  the  mind  like  a  nightmare. 


[14] 

developments  in  technique  and  destructive 
force  that  would  have  delighted  Nisroch, 
who  first  invented  aerial  "machinations 
to  plague  the  sons  of  men."  A  group  of 
medical  men  representing  the  chief  univer- 
sities and  medical  bodies  of  the  United 
Kingdom  was  innocent  enough  to  suggest 
that  such  an  unclean  weapon  —  the  use  of 
lethal  gases,  "condemning  its  victims  to 
death  by  long-drawn-out  torture,"  and 
with  infinite  possibilities  for  its  further  de- 
velopment—  should  be  forever  abolished. 
"Steeped  in  folly  by  theories  and  prepos- 
sessions," failure  to  read  the  "lessons  of 
war  which  should  have  sufficed  to  con- 
vince a  beetle"  —  such  were  among  the 
newspaper  comments ;  and  in  other  ways 
we  were  given  to  understand  that  our  inter- 
ference in  such  matters  was  most  untimely. 
All  the  same,  it  is  gratifying  to  see  that  the 
suggestion  has  been  adopted  at  the  Peace 
Congress. 


[   15] 

With  what  a  howl  of  righteous  indigna- 
tion the  slaughter  of  our  innocent  women 
and  children  by  the  bombing  of  open  towns 
was  received !  It  was  a  dirty  and  bloody 
business,  worthy  of  the  Oxydracians  by 
means  of  Levin-bolts  and  Thunders  and 
more  horrible,  more  frightful,  more  dia- 
bolical, maiming,  breaking,  tearing,  and 
slaying  more  folk  and  confounding  men's 
senses  and  throwing  down  more  walls  than 
would  a  hundred  thunderbolts.1 

Against  reprisals  there  was  at  first  a 
strong  feeling.  Early  in  1916 1  wrote  to  the 
" Times":  "The  cry  for  reprisals  illus- 
trates the  exquisitely  hellish  state  of  mind 
into  which  war  plunges  even  sensible  men. 
Not  a  pacifist,  but  a  '  last-ditcher, '  yet  I  re- 
fuse to  believe  that  as  a  nation,  how  bitter 
soever  the  provocation,  we  shall  stain  our 
hands  in  the  blood  of  the  innocent.  In  this 
matter  let  us  be  free  from  bloodguiltiness, 

1  Rabelais,  Book  iv,  ch.  LXI. 


[  16] 

and  let  not  the  undying  reproach  of  human- 
ity rest  on  us  as  on  the  Germans."  Two 
years  changed  me  into  an  ordinary  barba- 
rian. A  detailed  tally  of  civilians  killed  by 
our  airmen  has  not,  I  believe,  been  pub- 
lished, but  the  total  figures  quoted  are  not 
far  behind  the  German. 

Could  a  poll  have  been  taken  a  week  be- 
fore the  Armistice  as  to  the  moral  justifica- 
tion of  the  bombing  of  Berlin  —  for  which 
we  were  ready  —  how  we  should  have 
howled  at  the  proposer  of  any  doubt !  And 
many  Jonahs  were  displeased  that  a  city 
greater  than  Nineveh,  with  more  than  the 
threescore  and  ten  thousand  who  knew  not 
the  right  hand  from  the  left,  had  been 
spared.  We  may  deplore  the  necessity  and 
lament,  as  did  a  certain  great  personage : 

"  .  .  .  Yet  public  reason  just  — 
Honour  and  empire  with  revenge  enlarged 

.  .  .  compels  me  now 
To  do  what  else,  though  damned,  I  should  abhor." 


[ir] 

All  the  same,  we  considered  ourselves 
"  Christians  of  the  best  edition,  all  picked 
and  culled,"  and  the  churches  remained 
open,  prayers  rose  to  Jehovah,  many  of 
whose  priests  —  even  his  bishops !  — were 
in  khaki,  and  quit  themselves  like  men  — 
yes,  and  scores  died  the  death  of  heroes ! 
Into  such  hells  of  inconsistency  does  war 
plunge  the  best  of  us  ! 

Learning  —  new  or  old  —  seems  a  vain 
thing  to  save  a  nation,  but  possibly,  as  a  set- 
off,  science,  as  represented  by  cellulose  and 
sulphuric  acid,  may  yet  prove  the  best  bul- 
wark of  civilization!  In  his  "History  of  the 
Origin  of  Medicine,"  '  Lettsom  maintains 
that  the  invention  of  firearms  has  done  more 
to  prevent  the  destruction  of  the  human 
species  than  any  other  discovery;  he  says : 
"Invention  and  discernment  of  mind  have 
made  it  possible  to  reverse  the  ancient  max- 
im that  strength  has  always  prevailed  over 
1  1778,  p.  30- 


[   18] 

wisdom."  Science  alone  may  prevent  a  re- 
petition of  the  story  of  Egypt,  of  Babylonia, 
of  Greece,  and  of  Rome.  The  suggestion 
seems  brazen  effrontery  when  we  have  not 
even  given  the  world  the  equivalent  of  the 
Pax  Romana  !  Ah  !  what  a  picture  of  self- 
satisfied  happiness  in  Plutarch !  One  envies 
that  placid  life  in  the  midst  of  the  only  great 
peace  the  world  has  known,  spanning  a  pe- 
riod of  more  than  two  hundred  years.  And 
he  could  say,  "No  tumults,  no  civil  sedi- 
tion, no  tyrannies,  no  pestilences  nor  calam- 
ities depopulating  Greece,  no  epidemic  dis- 
ease needing  powerful  and  choice  drugs  and 
medicines";  though  as  a  Delphic  priest 
there  is  a  pathetic  lament  that  the  Pythian 
priestess  has  now  only  commonplace  ques- 
tions to  deal  with.1  Surely  those  cultivated 
men  of  his  circle  must  have  felt  that  their 
house  could  never  be  removed.  Has  Science 

i  "  why  the  Pythian  Priestess,"  etc.  (Plutarch's  Morals,  vol. 
HI,  p.  100,  Good  win' s  edition). 


[  19] 

reached  such  control  over  Nature  that  she 
will  enable  our  civilization  to  escape  the  law 
of  the  Ephesian,  written  on  all  known  rec- 
ords— panta  rei?  Perhaps  so,  now  that 
material  civilization  is  world-wide ;  cata- 
clysmic forces,  powerful  enough  in  centres 
of  origin,  may  weaken  as  they  pass  out  in 
circles.  Let  this  be  our  hope  in  the  present 
crisis.  At  any  rate,  in  the  free  democracies 
in  which  Demos  with  safety  says  '  ^L^Etat 
Jestmoi"  it  has  yet  to  be  determined 
whether  Science,  as  the  embodiment  of  a 
mechanical  force,  can  rule  without  invok- 
ing ruin.  Two  things  are  clear :  there  must 
be  a  very  different  civilization  or  there  will  be 
no  civilization  at  all ;  and  the  other  is  that 
neither  the  old  religion  combined  with  the 
old  learning,  nor  both  with  the  new  science, 
suffice  to  save  a  nation  bent  on  self-destruc- 
tion. The  suicide  of  Germany,  the  out- 
standing fact  of  the  war,  followed  an  out- 
burst of  national  megalomania.  For  she 


[20] 

had  religion  —  it  may  shock  some  of  you  to 
hear !  I  mean  the  people,  not  the  writers  or 
the  thinkers,  but  the  people  for  whom  Lu- 
ther lived  and  Huss  died.  Of  the  two  devo- 
tional ceremonies  which  stand  supreme  in 
my  memory,  one  was  a  service  in  the  Dom, 
Berlin,  in  which 4 '  not  the  great  nor  well  be- 
spoke, but  the  mere  uncounted  folk"  sang 
1  Luther's  great  hymn  "jEw'  feste  Burg  ist 
wiser  Gott. ' ' '  With  the  Humanities  Ger- 
many never  broke,  and  the  proportion  of 
students  in  her  schools  and  universities  who 
studied  Greek  and  Latin  has  been  higher 
than  in  any  other  country.  You  know  bet- 
ter than  I  the  innumerable  classical  stud- 
ies of  her  scholars.  In  classical  learning 
relating  to  science  and  medicine  she  simply 
had  the  field;  for  one  scholar  in  other  coun- 
tries she  had  a  dozen,  and  the  monopoly  of 
journals  relating  to  the  history  of  these  sub- 

1  And  the  other,  how  different  !  The  crowded  Blue  Mosque  of 
Cairo,  and  the  crowded  streets  with  the  thousands  of  kneeling  Mos- 
lems awaiting  the  cry  of  the  muezzin  from  the  tower. 


jects.  And  she  had  science,  and  led  the 
world  in  the  application  of  the  products  of 
the  laboratory  to  the  uses  of  every-day  life 
—  in  commerce,  in  the  arts,  and  in  war. 
Withal,  like  Jeshurun,  she  waxed  fat;  and 
did  ever  such  pride  go  before  such  destruc- 
tion? What  a  tragedy  that  the  successors 
of  Virchow  and  TraubeandHelmholtzand 
Billroth  should  have  made  her  a  byword 
among  the  nations!  "Lilies  that  fester 
smell  far  worse  than  weeds  ! ' ' 


II 

SO  much  preliminary  to  the  business  be- 
fore us,  to  meet  changed  conditions  as 
practical  men,  with  the  reinforcement  born 
of  hope  or  with  the  strong  resolution  of  de- 
spair. 

For  what  does  this  Association  stand  ? 
What  are  these  classical  interests  that  you 
represent?  Take  a  familiar  simile.  By  a 
very  simple  trick,  you  remember,  did  Em- 
pedocles  give  Menippus  in  the  moon-halt 
—  the  first  stage  of  his  memorable  trip  — 
such  long  and  clear  vision  that  he  saw  the 
tribes  of  men  like  a  nest  of  ants,  a  seething 
mass  going  to  and  fro  at  their  different 
tasks.  Of  the  function  of  the  classical  mem- 
bers in  this  myrmecic  community  there  can 
be  no  question .  Neither  warriors ,  nor  slaves , 
nor  neuters,  you  live  in  a  well-protected 
social  environment, heretofore  free  from  ene- 


[23] 

mies,  and  have  been  well  taken  care  of.  I 
hate  to  speak  of  you  as  larvae,  but  as  such 
you  perform  a  duty  of  the  greatest  import 
in  this  trophidium  stage  of  your  existence. 
Let  me  explain.  From  earliest  days  much 
attention  has  been  paid  by  naturalists  to  the 
incredible  affection ' ' — incredible  a-ropyij, ' ' 
Swammerdam  calls  it  — which  ants  display 
in  feeding,  licking,  and  attending  the  lar- 
vae. Disturb  a  nest,  and  the  chief  care  is  to 
take  them  to  a  place  of  safety.  This  atten- 
tion is  what  our  symphilic  community  — 
to  use  a  biological  term  — bestows  on  you. 
So  intensely  altruistic,  apparently,  is  this 
behaviour,  that  for  the  very  word ' '  aropy^ ' ' 
which  expresses  the  tenderest  of  all  feelings, 
there  is  a  difficulty  in  finding  an  equiva-  - 
lent ;  indeed,  Gilbert  White  used  it  almost 
as  an  English  word.  The  truth  is  really  very 

different.  ^ 

It  has  been  shown  that  the  nursing  func-  / 
tion  —  or  instinct  —  is  really  trophallactic. 


[24] 

In  the  case  of  the  ant  the  nurse  places  the 
larva  on  its  back,  and  the  broad  ventral  sur- 
face serves  as  a  trough  for  the  food,  often 
predigested.  The  skill  and  devotion  with 
which  this  is  done  are  among  the  wonders 
in  the  life  of  the  insect  to  which  moralists 
have  never  tired  of  urging  a  visit.  But  lis- 
ten to  the  sequel!  The  larva  is  provided 
with  a  pair  of  rich  honey-bags  in  the  shape 
of  salivary  glands,  big  exudatoria  from 
which  is  discharged  an  ambrosia  greedily 
lapped  up  by  the  nurse,  who  with  this  con- 
siders herself  well  paid  for  her  care.  In  the 
same  manner,  when  the  assiduous  V.  A.D, 
wasp  distributes  food  to  the  larvae,  the  heads 
of  which  eagerly  protrude  from  their  cells, 
she  must  be  paid  by  a  draught  of  nectar 
from  their  exudatoria,  while  if  it  is  not 
forthcoming  the  wasp  seizes  the  head  of  the 
larva  in  her  mandibles  and  jams  it  back  into 
its  cell  and  compels  it  to  pay  up.  The  lazy 
males  will  play  the  same  game  and  even 


[25] 

steal  the  much -sought  liquid  without  any 
compensatory  gift  of  nourishment.1 

What  does  the  community  at  large,  so 
careful  of  your  comforts,  expect  from  you? 
Surely  the  honey-dew  and  the  milk  of  par- 
adise secreted  from  your  classical  exuda- 
toria,  which  we  lap  up  greedily  in  recen- 
sions, monographs,  commentaries,  histo- 
ries, translations,  and  brochures.  Among 
academic  larvae  you  have  for  centuries  ab- 
sorbed the  almost  undivided  interest  of  the 
nest,  and  not  without  reason,  for  the  very 
life  of  the  workers  depends  on  the  hor- 
mones you  secrete.  Though  small  in  num- 
ber, your  group  has  an  enormous  kinetic 
value,  like  our  endocrine  organs.  For  man's 
body,  too,  is  a  humming  hive  of  working 
cells,  each  with  its  specific  function,  all  un- 
der central  control  of  the  brain  and  heart, 
and  all  dependent  on  materials  called  hor- 

^ 

1  Professor  Wheeler  in  Proceedings  of  Amer.  Phil.  Soc.,vol.     > 
LVII,  no.  4,  1918. 


[26] 

mones  (secreted  by  small,  even  insignifi- 
cant-looking structuresXwhich  lubricate  the 
wheels  of  life.  For  example,  remove  the 
thyroid  gland  just  below  the  Adam's  apple, 
and  you  deprive  man  of  the  lubricants 
which  enable  his  thought-engines  to  work 
—  it  is  as  if  you  cut  off  the  oil-supply  of  a 
motor  —  and  gradually  the  stored  acquisi- 
tions of  his  mind  cease  to  be  available,  and 
within  a  year  he  sinks  into  dementia.  The 
normal  processes  of  the  skin  cease,  the  hair 
falls,  the  features  bloat,  and  the  paragon  of 
animals  is  transformed  into  a  shapeless 
caricature  of  humanity.  These  essential 
lubricators,  of  which  a  number  are  now 
known,  are  called  hormones — you  will  rec- 
ognize from  its  derivation  how  appropriate 
is  the  term. 

Now,  the  men  of  your  guild  secrete  ma- 
terials which  do  for  society  at  large  what 
the  thyroid  gland  does  for  the  individual. 
The  Humanities  are  the  hormones.  Our 


[27   ] 

friend  Mr.  P.  S.  Allen  read  before  this  As- 
sociation a  most  suggestive  paper  on  the 
historical  evolution  of  the  word  "Human- 
ism." I  like  to  think  of  the  pleasant-flav- 
oured word  as  embracing  all  the  knowledge 
of  the  ancient  classical  world — what  man 
knew  of  nature  as  well  as  what  he  knew 
of  himself.  Let  us  see  what  this  univer- 
sity means  by  the  Literse  Humaniores.  The 
' '  Greats ' '  papers  for  the  past  decade  make 
interesting  study.  With  singular  uniform- 
ity there  is  diversity  enough  to  bear  high 
tribute  to  the  ingenuity  of  the  examiners. 
But,  comparing  the  subjects  in  1918  with 
those  in  the  first  printed  papers  of  the  school 
in  1831,  one  is  surprised  to  find  them  the 
same — practically  no  change  in  the  eighty- 
seven  years!  Compare  them,  again,  with  the 
subjects  given  in  John Napleton's  "Consid- 
erations" in  1773  —  no  change!  and  with 
the  help  of  Rashdall  we  may  trace  the  story 
of  the  studies  in  arts,  only  to  find  that  as 


[28] 

far  back  as  126r,  with  different  names 
sometimes,  they  have  been  through  all  the 
centuries  essentially  the  same — Greek  and 
Latin  authors,  logic,  rhetoric,  grammar, 
and  the  philosophies,  natural,  moral,  and 
metaphysical — practically  the  seven  lib- 
eral arts  for  which,  as  you  may  see  by  the 
names  over  the  doors,  Bodley's  building 
provided  accommodation.  Why  this  inva- 
riableness  in  an  ever-turning  world?  One 
of  the  marvels,  so  commonplace  that  it  has 
ceased  to  be  marvellous,  is  the  deep  root- 
ing of  our  civilization  in  the  soil  of  Greece 
and  Rome — much  of  our  dogmatic  reli- 
gion, practically  all  the  philosophies,  the 
models  of  our  literature,  the  ideals  of  our 
democratic  freedom,  the  fine  and  the  tech- 
nical arts,  the  fundamentals  of  science,  and 
the  basis  of  our  law.  The  Humanities  bring 
the  student  into  contact  with  the  master 
minds  who  gave  us  these  things — with  the 
dead  who  never  die,  with  those  immortal 


[29] 

lives  "not  of  now  nor  of  yesterday,  but 
which  always  were." 

As  true  to-day  as  in  the  fifth  century 
B.C.  the  name  of  Hellas  stands  no  longer 
for  the  name  of  a  race,  but  as  the  name 
of  knowledge ;  or,  as  more  tersely  put  by 
Maine, '  *  Except  the  blind  forces  of  Nature, 
nothing  moves  [intellectually,  he  means] 
in  this  world  that  is  not  Greek  in  origin." 
Man's  anabasis  from  the  old  priest-ridden 
civilizations  of  the  East  began  when  ' '  the 
light  of  reason  lighted  up  all  things,"  with 
which  saying  Anaxagoras  expressed  our 
modern  outlook  on  life. 

The  Humanities  have  been  a  subject  of 
criticism  in  two  directions.  Their  over- 
whelming prominence,  it  is  claimed,  pre~ 
vents  the  development  of  learning  in  other 
and  more  useful  directions ;  and  the  method 
of  teaching  is  said  to  be  antiquated  and  out 
of  touch  with  the  present  needs.  They  con- 
trol the  academic  life  of  Oxford .  An  analysis 


[30] 

of  the  Register  for  1919  shows  that  of  the 
257  men  comprising  the  Heads  and  Fel- 
lows of  the  twenty -three  colleges  (includ- 
ing St.  Edmund's  Hall),  only  fifty-one  are 
scientific,  including  the  mathematicians. 

It  is  not  very  polite,  perhaps,  to  suggest 
that  as  transmitters  and  interpreters  they 
should  not  bulk  quite  so  large  in  a  modern 
university.  'T  was  all  very  well 

"  .  .  .  in  days  when  wits  were  fresh  and  clear 
And  life  ran  gaily  as  the  sparkling  Thames  —  " 

in  those  happy  days  when  it  was  felt  that 
all  knowledge  had  been  garnered  by  those 
divine  men  of  old  time,  that  there  was  noth- 
ing left  but  to  enjoy  the  good  things  har- 
vested by  such  universal  providers  as  Isi- 
dore, Rabanus  Maurus,  and  Vincent  of 
Beauvais,  and  those  stronger  dishes  served 
by  such  artists  as  Albertus  Magnus  and 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas — delicious  blends  of 
such  skill  that  only  the  palate  of  an  Api- 


[31] 

cius  could  separate  Greek,  Patristic,  and 
Arabian  savours. 

It  is  not  the  dominance,  but  the  unequal 
dominance  that  is  a  cause  of  just  complaint. 
As  to  methods  of  teaching — by  their  fruits 
ye  shall  know  them.  The  product  of 
"Greats"  needs  no  description  in  this 
place .  Many  deny  the  art  to  find  the  mind' s 
construction  in  the  face,  but  surely  not  the 
possibility  of  diagnosing  at  a'glance  a ' '  first 
in  Greats ' ' !  Only  in  him  is  seen  that  alto- 
gether superior  expression,  that  self-con- 
sciousness of  having  reached  life's  goal,  of 
having,  in  that  pickled  sentence  of  Dean 
Gaisford's  Christmas  sermon,  done  some- 
thing ' '  that  not  only  elevates  above  the 
common  herd,  but  leads  not  unfrequently 
to  positions  of  considerable  emolument." 
"Many  are  the  wand-bearers,  few  are  the 
mystics, ' '  and  a  system  should  not  be  judged 
by  the  exceptions.  As  a  discipline  of  the 
mind  for  the  few,  the  system  should  not  be 


[    32] 

touched,  and  we  should  be  ready  to  sacri- 
fice a  holocaust  of  undergraduates  every 
year  to  produce  in  each  generation  a  scholar 
of  the  type  of,  say,  Ingram  By  water.  'Tis 
Nature's  method  —  does  it  not  cost  some 
thousands  of  eggs  and  fry  to  produce  one 
salmon  ? 

But  the  average  man,  not  of  scholar 
timber,  may  bring  one  railing  accusation 
against  his  school  and  college.  Apart  from 
mental  discipline,  the  value  of  the  ancient 
languages  is  to  give  a  key  to  their  litera- 
tures. Yet  we  make  boys  and  young  men 
spend  ten  or  more  years  on  the  study  of 
Greek  and  Latin,  at  the  end  of  which  time 
the  beauties  of  the  languages  are  still  hidden 
because  of  the  pernicious  method  in  which 
they  are  taught.  It  passes  my  understand- 
ing how  the  more  excellent  way  of  Mon- 
taigne, of  Milton,  and  of  Locke  should  have 
been  neglected  until  recently.  Make  the  lan- 
guage an  instrument  to  play  with  and  toplay 


[33] 

with  thoroughly,  and  recognize  that  except 
for  the  few  in  "Mods."  and  "  Greats  "  it 
is  superfluous  to  know  how  the  instrument 
is  constructed,  or  to  dissect  the  neuro-mus- 
cular  mechanism  by  which  it  is  played.  It 
is  satisfactory  to  read  that  the  Greek  Cur- 
riculum Committee  thinks  "it  is  possible 
in  a  comparatively  short  time  to  acquire  a 
really  valuable  knowledge  of  Greek,  and  to 
learn  to  read  with  accuracy  and  fair  fluency 
some  of  the  most  important  works  in  Greek 
literature."  I  am  sure  of  it,  if  the  teacher 
will  go  to  school  to  Montaigne  and  feed  fat 
against  that  old  scoundrel  Protagoras  a 
well-earned  grudge  for  inventing  grammar 
— pace  Mr.  Livingstone,  every  chapter  in 
whose  two  books  appeal  to  me,  except 
those  on  grammar,  against  which  I  have 
a  medullary  prejudice.  I  speak,  of  course, 
as  a  fool  among  the  wise,  and  I  am  not 
pleading  for  the  "  'Greats' '  men,  but  for  the 
average  man,  whom  to  infect  with  the  spirit 


[34] 

of  the  Humanities  is  the  greatest  single  gift 
in  education.  To  you  of  the  elect  this  is  pure 
camouflage — the  amateur  talking  to  the  ex- 
perts; but  there  is  another  side  upon  which 
I  feel  something  may  be  said  by  one  whose 
best  friends  have  been  the  old  Humanists, 
and  whose  breviary  is  Plutarch,  or  rather 
Plutarch  gallicized  by  Montaigne.  Para- 
phrasing Mark  Twain's  comment  upon 
Christian  Science,  the  so-called  Humanists 
have  not  enough  Science,  and  Science  sadly 
lacks  the  Humanities.  This  unhappy  di- 
vorce, which  should  never  have  taken  place, 
has  been  officially  recognized  in  the  two 
reports  edited  by  Sir  Frederic  Kenyon,1 
which  have  stirred  the  pool,  and  cannot  but 
be  helpful.  To  have  got  constructive,  ana- 
bolic action  from  representatives  of  inter- 
ests so  diverse  is  most  encouraging.  While 
all  agree  that  neither  in  the  public  schools 

1    Education,  Scientific  and  Humane  (1917),  and  Education, 
Secondary  and  University  (1919). 


[35] 

nor  in  the  older  universities  are  the  condi- 
tions at  present  in  keeping  with  the  urgent 
scientific  needs  of  the  nation,  the  specific  is 
not  to  be  sought  in  endowments  alone,  but 
in  the  leaven  which  may  work  a  much- 
needed  change  in  both  branches  of  knowl- 
edge. 


Ill 

THE  School  of  Liters  Humaniores  ex- 
cites wonder  in  the  extent  and  variety 
of  the  knowledge  demanded,  and  there  is 
everywhere  evidence  of  the  value  placed 
upon  the  ancient  models ;  but  this  wonder 
pales  before  the  gasping  astonishment  at 
what  is  not  there.  Now  and  again  a  hint, 
a  reference,  a  recognition,  but  the  moving 
forces  which  have  made  the  modern  world 
are  simply  ignored.  Yet  they  are  all  Hel- 
lenic, all  part  and  parcel  of  the  Humanities 
in  the  true  sense,  and  all  of  prime  impor- 
tance in  modern  education.  Twin  berries  on 
one  stem,  grievous  damage  has  been  done 
to  both  in  regarding  the  Humanities  and 
Science  in  any  other  light  than  complemen- 
tal.  Perhaps  the  anomalous  position  of  sci- 
ence in  our  philosophical  school  is  due  to 
the  necessary  filtration,  indeed  the  preser- 


[  sr  ] 

vation,  of  our  classical  knowledge,  through 
ecclesiastical  channels.  Of  this  the  persist- 
ence of  the  Augustinian  questions  until  late 
in  the  eighteenth  century  is  an  interesting 
indication .  The  moulder  of  Western  Chris- 
tianity  had  not  much  use  for  science,  and 
the  Greek  spirit  was  stifled  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  Middle  Ages.  ' '  Content  to  be 
deceived,  to  live  in  a  twilight  of  fiction,  un- 
der clouds  of  false  witnesses,  inventing  ac- 
cording to  convenience,  and  glad  to  wel- 
come the  forger  and  the  cheat ' '  —  such,  as 
Lord  Acton  somewhere  says,  were  the  Mid- 
dle Ages.  Strange,  is  it  not  ?  that  one  man 
alone,  Roger  Bacon,  mastered  his  environ- 
ment and  had  a  modern  outlook.1 

The  practical  point  for  us  here  is  that  in 
the  only  school  dealing  with  the  philosophy 

1  How  modern  Bacon's  outlook  was  may  be  judged  from  the 
following  sentence :  **  Experimental  science  has  three  great  preroga- 
tives over  all  other  sciences  —  it  verifies  conclusions  by  direct  ex- 
periment, it  discovers  truths  which  they  could  never  reach,  and  it 
investigates  the  secrets  of  nature  and  opens  to  us  a  knowledge  of  the 
past  and  of  the  future.** 


[   38   ] 

of  human  thought,  the  sources  of  the  new 
science  that  has  made  a  new  world  are  prac- 
tically ignored.  One  gets  even  an  impres- 
sion of  neglect  in  the  schools,  or  at  any  rate 
of  scant  treatment,  of  the  Ionian  philoso- 
phers, the  very  fathers  of  your  fathers.  Few 
"Greats"  men,  I  fear,  could  tell  why  Hip- 
pocrates is  a  living  force  to-day,  or  why  a 
modern  scientific  physician Vould  feel  more 
at  home  with  Erasistratus  and  Herophilus 
at  Alexandria,  or  with  Galen  atPergamos, 
than  at  any  period  in  our  story  up  to,  say, 
Harvey.  Except  as  a  delineator  of  charac- 
ter, what  does  the  Oxford  scholar  know  of 
Theophrastus,  the  founder  of  modern  bot- 
any, and  a  living  force  to-day  in  one  of  the 
two  departments  of  biology,  and  made  ac- 
cessible to  English  readers  —  perhaps  in- 
deed to  Greek  readers  !  —  by  Sir  Arthur 
Hort  ? '  Beggarly  recognition  or  base  indif- 
ference is  meted  out  to  the  men  whose  minds 

1  Loeb  Series. 


[   39] 

have  fertilized  science  in  every  department. 
The  pulse  of  every  student  should  beat 
faster  as  he  reads  the  story  of  Archimedes, 
of  Hero,  of  Aristarchus,  names  not  even 
mentioned  in  the  "Greats"  papers  in  the 
past  decade.  Yet  the  methods  of  these  men 
exorcised  vagaries  and  superstitions  from 
the  human  mind  and  pointed  to  a  clear 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  nature.  It  is  sur- 
prising that  some  wag  among  the  examin- 
ers has  never  relieved  the  grave  monotony 
of  the  papers  by  such  peripatetic  questions 
as  "How  long  a  gnat  lives,"  "To  how 
many  fathoms'  depth  the  sunlight  pene- 
trates the  sea,"  and  "What  an  oyster's 
soul  is  like ' '  —  questions  which  indicate 
whence  the  modern  Lucian  got  his  inspira- 
tion to  chaff  so  successfully  Boyle  and  the 
professors  of  Gresham  College. 

May  I  dwell  upon  two  instances  of  shock- 
ing neglect?  It  really  is  amusing  in  Oxford 
to  assert  neglect  of ' '  the  measurer  of  all  Art 


[40] 

and  Science,  whose  is  all  that  is  best  in  the 
passing  sublunary  world,"  as  Richard  de 
Bury  calls  *  'the  Prince  of  the  Schooles. ' '  In 
Gulliver's  voyage  to  Laputa  he  paid  a  visit 
to  the  little  island  of  Glubbdubdrib,  whose 
Governor,  you  remember,  had  an  Endorian 
command  over  the  spirits,  such  as  Sir  Oli- 
ver Lodge  or  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  might 
envy.  When  Aristotle  and  his  commenta- 
tors were  summoned,  to  Gulliver's  surprise 
they  were  strangers,  for  the  reason  that  hav- 
ing so  horribly  misrepresented  Aristotle's 
meaning  to  posterity,  a  consciousness  of 
guilt  and  shame  kept  them  far  away  from 
him  in  the  lower  world.  Such  shame,  I  fear, 
will  make  the  shades  of  many  classical  dons 
of  this  university  seek  shelter  with  the  com- 
mentators when  they  realize  their  neglect  of 
one  of  the  most  fruitful  of  all  the  activities 
of  the  Master.  In  biology  Aristotle  speaks 
for  the  first  time  the  language  of  modern  sci- 
ence, and  indeed  he  seems  to  have  been  first 


[41   ] 

and  foremost  a  biologist,  and  his  natural  his- 
tory studies  influenced  profoundly  his  soci- 
ology, his  psychology,  and  his  philosophy 
in  general.  The  beginner  may  be  sent  now 
to  Professor  D'Arcy  Wentworth  Thomp- 
son's Herbert  Spencer  Lecture,  1913,  and  he 
must  be  indeed  a  dull  and  muddy-mettled 
rascal  whose  imagination  is  not  fired  by 
the  enthusiastic — yet  true — picture  of  the 
founder  of  modern  biology,  whose  language 
is  our  language,  whose  methods  and  prob- 
lems are  our  own ,  the  man  who  knew  a  thou- 
sand varied  forms  of  life,  —  of  plant,  of 
bird,  and  animal,  — their  outward  struc- 
ture, their  metamorphosis,  their  early  de- 
velopment ;  who  studied  the  problems  of 
heredity,  of  sex,  of  nutrition,  of  growth,  of 
adaptation,  and  of  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence.1 And  the  senior  student,  if  capable 
of  appreciating  a  biological  discovery,  I  ad- 
vise to  study  the  account  by  Johannes 

1  Summarized  from  D'Arcy  Wentworth  Thompson. 


[42  ] 

Miiller '  (himself  a  pioneer  in  anatomy)  of 
his  rediscovery  of  Aristotle's  remarkable 
discovery  of  a  special  mode  of  reproduc- 
tion in  one  of  the  species  of  sharks.  For 
two  thousand  years  the  founder  of  the 
science  of  embryology  had  neither  rival 
nor  worthy  follower.  There  is  no  refer- 
ence, I  believe,  to  the  biological  works  in  the 
Liters  Humaniores  papers  for  the  past  ten 
years,  yet  they  form  the  very  foundations 
of  discoveries  that  have  turned  our  philos- 
ophies topsy-turvy. 

Nothing  reveals  the  unfortunate  break 
in  Humanities  more  clearly  than  the  treat- 
ment of  the  greatest  nature-poet  in  litera- 
ture, a  man  who  had  "  gazed  on  Nature's 
naked  loveliness"  unabashed,  the  man 
who  united,  as  no  one  else  has  ever  done, 
the  ' '  functions  and  temper  and  achieve- 
ment of  science  and  poetry"  (Herford). 
The  golden  work  of  Lucretius  is  indeed 

1  Ueberden  Glatten  Hat  des  A ristotlcs.  (Berlin,  1842.) 


[43] 

recognized,  and  in  Honour  Moderations, 
Books  I  to  III  and  V  are  set  as  one  of  seven 
alternatives  in  section  D;  and  scattered 
through  the  ' '  Greats ' '  papers  are  set  trans- 
lations and  snippets  here  and  there;  but 
anything  like  adequate  consideration  from 
the  scientific  side  is  to  be  sought  in  vain. 
Unmatched  among  the  ancients  or  moderns 
is  the  vision  by  Lucretius  of  continuity  in 
the  workings  of  Nature  —  not  less  of  le 
silence  eternel  de  ces  espaces  injlnis  which  so 
affrighted  Pascal,  than  of  "  the  long,  limit- 
less age  of  days,  the  age  of  all  time  that  has 
gone  by  " — 

"...  longa  diei 
infinite  setas  anteacti  temper  is  omnis." 

And  it  is  in  a  Latin  poet  that  we  find  up- 
to-date  views  of  the  origin  of  the  world  and 
of  the  origin  of  man.  The  description  of  the 
wild  discordant  storm  of  atoms  (Book  V) 
which  led  to  the  birth  of  the  world  might 
be  transferred  verbatim  to  the  accounts  of 


[44] 

Poincare  or  of  Arrhenius  of  the  growth 
of  new  celestial  bodies  in  the  Milky  Way. 
What  an  insight  into  primitive  man  and 
the  beginnings  of  civilization !  He  might 
have  been  a  contemporary  and  friend,  and 
doubtless  was  a  tutor,  of  Tylor.  Book  II, 
a  manual  of  atomic  physics  with  its  mar- 
vellous conception  of 

"  ...  the  flaring  atom  streams 
And  torrents  of  her  myriad  universe," 

can  only  be  read  appreciatively  by  pupils 
of  Roentgen  or  of  J.  J.  Thomson.  The 
ring  theory  of  magnetism  advanced  in  Book 
VI  has  been  reproduced  of  late  by  Parsons, 
whose  magnetons  rotating  as  rings  at 
high  speed  have  the  form  and  effect  with 
which  this  disciple  of  Democritus  clothes 
his  magnetic  physics. 

And  may  I  here  enter  a  protest?  Of  love- 
philtres  that  produce  insanity  we  may  read 
the  truth  in  a  chapter  of  that  most  pleasant 
manual  of  erotology,  the  "Anatomy  of 


[45] 

Melancholy. ' '  Of  insanity  of  any  type  that 
leaves  a  mind  capable  in  lucid  intervals  of 
writing  such  verses  as  '  'DeRerum  Natura ' ' 
we  know  nothing.  The  sole  value  of  the 
myth  is  its  causal  association  with  the  poem 
of  Tennyson.  Only  exsuccous  dons  who 
have  never  known  the  wiles  and  ways  of  the 
younger  Aphrodite  would  take  the  intensity 
of  the  feeling  in  Book  IV  as  witness  to  any- 
thing but  an  accident  which  may  happen  to 
the  wisest  of  the  wise,  when  enthralled  by 
Vivien  or  some  dark  lady  of  the  Sonnets ! 

In  the  School  of  Liters  Humaniores 
studies  are  based  on  classical  literature  and 
on  history, ' '  but  a  large  number  of  students 
approach  philosophical  study  from  other 
sides.  Students  of  such  subjects  as  math- 
ematics, natural  science,  history,  psychol- 
ogy, anthropology,  or  political  economy 
become  naturally  interested  in  philosophy, 
and  their  needs  are  at  present  very  imper- 
fectly provided  for  in  this  university. ' '  This 


[46] 

I  quote  from  a  Report  to  the  Board  of  the 
Faculty  of  Arts  made  just  before  the  war  on 
a  proposed  new  Honour  School,  the  subject 
of  which  should  be  the  principles  of  phi- 
losophy considered  in  their  relation  to  the 
sciences.  That  joint  action  of  this  kind 
should  have  been  taken  by  the  Boards  of 
Arts  and  of  Science  indicates  a  widespread 
conviction  that  no  man  is  cultivated  up  to 
the  standard  of  his  generation  who  has  not 
an  appreciation  of  how  the  greatest  achieve- 
ments of  the  human  mind  have  been  reached ; 
and  the  practical  question  is  howr  to  introduce 
such  studies  into  the  course  of  liberal  educa- 
tion, how  to  give  the  science  school  the  leaven 
of  an  old  philosophy,  how  to  leaven  the 
old  philosophical  school  with  the  thoughts 
of  science.1 

1  Since  I  wrote  this  lecture,  Professor  J.  A.  Stewart  has  sent  me 
his  just-published  essay  on  Oxford  after  the  War  and  a  Liberal 
Education,  in  which  he  urges  with  all  the  weight  of  his  learning 
and  experience  that  the  foundations  of  liberal  education  in  Oxford 

["  should  be  "No  Humane  Letters  without  Natural  Science  and  no 

I   Natural  Science  without  Humane  Letters." 


It  is  important  to  recognize  that  there  is 
nothing  my  sterious  in  the  method  of  science, 
or  apart  from  the  ordinary  routine  of  life. 
Science  has  been  defined  as  the  habit  or 
faculty  of  observation.  By  such  the  child 
grows  in  knowledge,  and  in  its  daily  exer- 
cise an  adult  lives  and  moves.  Only  a  quan- 
titative difference  makes  observation  scien- 
tific —  accuracy  ;  in  that  way  alone  do  we 
discover  things  as  they  really  are.  This  is 
the  essence  of  Plato's  definition  of  science 
as  "the  discovery  of  things  as  they  really 
are,"  whether  in  the  heavens  above,  in  the 
earth  beneath,  or  in  the  observer  himself. 
As  a  mental  operation,  the  scientific  method^ 
is  equally  applicable  to  deciphering  a  bit 
of  Beneventan  script,  to  the  analysis  of  the 
evidence  of  the  Commission  on  Coal-Mines, 
a  study  of  the  mechanism  of  the  nose-dive, 
or  of  the  colour-scheme  in  tiger-beetles. 
To  observation  and  reasoned  thought,  the 
Greek  added  experiment,  but  never  fully 


[48  ] 

used  it  in  biology,  an  instrument  which  has 
made  science  productive,  and  to  which  the 
modern  world  owes  its  civilization.  Our 
every-day  existence  depends  on  the  practi- 
cal application  of  discoveries  in  pure  sci- 
ence by  men  who  had  no  other  motives  than 
a  search  for  knowledge  of  Nature's  laws, 
a  disinterestedness  which  Burnet  claims  to 
be  the  distinctive  gift  of  Hellas  to  humanity. 
With  the  discovery  of  induced  currents 
Faraday  had  no  thought  of  the  dynamo. 
Crookes's  tubes  were  a  plaything  until 
Roentgen  turned  them  into  practical  use 
with  the  X-rays.  Perkin  had  no  thought 
of  transforming  chemical  industry  when 
he  discovered  aniline  dyes.  Priestley  would 
have  cursed  the  observation  that  an  elec- 
trical charge  produced  nitrous  acid  had  he 
foreseen  that  it  would  enable  Germany  to 
prolong  the  war,  but  he  would  have  blessed 
the  thought  that  it  may  make  us  independ- 
ent of  all  outside  sources  for  fertilizers. 


[49] 

The  extraordinary  development  of  mod- 
ern science  may  be  her  undoing.  Special- 
ism, now  a  necessity,  has  fragmented  the 
specialities  themselves  in  a  way  that  makes 
the  outlook  hazardous.  The  workers  lose  all 
sense  of  proportion  in  a  maze  of  minutiae. 
Everywhere  men  are  in  small  coteries  in- 
tensely absorbed  in  subjects  of  deep  inter- 
est, but  of  very  limited  scope.  Chemistry, 
a  century  ago  an  appanage  of  the  Chair  of 
Medicine  or  even  of  Divinity,  has  now  a 
dozen  departments,  each  with  its  laboratory 
and  literature,  sometimes  its  own  society. 
Applying  themselves  early  to  research, 
young  men  get  into  backwaters  far  from 
the  main  stream.  They  quickly  lose  the 
sense  of  proportion,  become  hypercritical, 
and  the  smaller  the  field,  the  greater  the 
tendency  to  megalocephaly.  The  study  for 
fourteen  years  of  the  variations  in  the  colour- 
scheme  of  the  thirteen  hundred  species  of 
tiger-beetles  scattered  over  the  earth  may 


[50] 

sterilize  a  man  into  a  sticker  of  pins  and  a 
paster  of  labels;  on  the  other  hand,  he  may 
be  a  modern  biologist  whose  interest  is  in 
the  experimental  modification  of  types,  and 
in  the  mysterious  insulation  of  hereditary 
characters  from  the  environment.  Only  in 
one  direction  does  the  modern  specialist 
acknowledge  his  debt  to  the  dead  lan- 
guages. Men  of  science  pay  homage,  as  do 
no  others,  to  the  god  of  words  whose  magic 
power  is  nowhere  so  manifest  as  in  the  plas- 
tic language  of  Greece.  The  only  visit  many 
students  pay  to  Parnassus  is  to  get  an  in- 
telligible label  for  a  fact  or  form  newly  dis- 
covered. Turn  the  pages  of  such  a  dictionary 
of  chemical  terms  as  Morley  and  Muir,  and 
you  meet  in  close-set  columns  countless 
names  unknown  a  decade  ago,  and  unintel- 
ligible to  the  specialist  in  another  depart- 
ment unless  familiar  with  Greek,  and  as 
meaningless  as  the  Arabic  jargon  in  such 
mediaeval  collections  as  the  ' '  Synonyma ' ' 


[51    ] 

of  Simon  Januensis  or  the  '  *  Pandects ' '  of 
Matheas  Sylyaticus.  As  "  Punch "  put  it 
the  other  day  in  a  delightful  poetical  review 
of  Professor  West's  volume : x 

"  Botany  relies  on  Latin  ever  since  Linnaeus'  days; 

Biologic  nomenclature  draws  on  Greek  in  count- 
less ways; 

While  in  Medicine  it  is  obvious  you  can  never 
take  your  oath  4 

What  an  ailment  means  exactly  if  you  have  n't 
studied  both." 

Let  me  give  a  couple  of  examples. 

Within  the  narrow  compass  of  the  prim- 
itive cell  from  which  all  living  beings  origi- 
nate, onomatomania  runs  riot.  The  process 
of  mitosis  has  developed  a  special  literature 
and  language.  Dealing  not  alone  with  the 
problems  of  heredity  and  of  sex ,  but  with  the 
very  dynamics  of  life,  the  mitotic  complex 
is  much  more  than  a  simple  physiological 
process,  and  in  the  action  and  interaction 
of  physical  forces  the  cytologist  hopes  to 

1   The  Value  of  the  Classics.  Princeton  University  Press,  1917. 


[52] 

find  the  key  to  the  secret  of  life  itself.  And 
what  a  Grecian  he  has  become  !  Listen  to 
this  account,  which  Aristotle  would  under- 
stand much  better  than  most  of  us. , 

The  karyogranulomes,  not  the  idiogran- 
ulomes  or  microsomenstratum  in  the  pro- 
toplasm of  the  spermatogonia,  unite  into 
the  idiosphserosome,  acrosoma  of  Lenhos- 
sek,  a  protean  phase,  as  the  idiosphaero- 
some  differentiates  into  an  idiocryptosome 
and  an  idiocalyptosome,  both  surrounded 
by  the  idiosphaerotheca,  the  archoplasmic 
vesicle ;  but  the  idioectosome  disappears 
in  the  metamorphosis  of  the  spermatid  into 
a  sphere,  the  idiophtharosome.  The  sepa- 
ration of  the  calyptosome  from  the  crypto- 
some  antedates  the  transformation  of  the 
idiosphaerotheca  into  the  spermiocalyptro- 
theca.1 

Or  take  a  more  practical  if  less  Cratylean 

1  Of  course!  have  made  this  up  out  of  a  recent  number  of  the 
American  Journal  of  Anatomy,  34,  I . 


[53] 

example.  In  our  precious  cabbage-patches 
the  holometabolous  insecta  are  the  hosts 
of  parasitic  poly  embryonic  hymenoptera, 
upon  the  prevalence  of  which  rests  the  psy- 
chic and  somatic  stamina  of  our  fellow 
countrymen ;  for  the  larvae  of  Pieris  brassicse, 
vulgarly  cabbage  butterfly,  are  parasitiased 
by  the  Apantales  glomeratus,  which  in  turn 
has  a  hyperparasite,  the  Mesochorus palli- 
dus.  It  is  tragic  to  think  that  the  fate  of  a 
plant,  the  dietetic  and  pharmaceutical  vir- 
tues of  which  have  been  so  extolled  by  Cato, 
and  upon  which  two  of  my  Plinean  col- 
leagues of  uncertain  date,  Chrysippus  and 
Dieuches,  wrote  monographs — it  fills  one 
with  terror  to  think  that  a  crop  so  dear  to 
Hodge  (etveriscymataftheBrussels  sprouts 
of  Columella)  should  depend  on  the  deposi- 
tion in  the  ovum  of  the  Pieris  of  anoth- 
er polyembryonic  egg.  The  cytoplasm  or 
ooplasm  of  this  forms  a  trophoamnion  and 
develops  into  a  poly  germinal  mass,  a  spheri- 


[54] 

cal  morula,  from  which  in  turn  develop  a 
hundred  or  more  larvae,  which  immediately 
proceed  to  eat  up  everything  in  and  of  the 
body  of  their  host.  Only  in  this  way  does 
Nature  preserve  the  Selenas,  the  Leas,  and 
the  Crambes,  so  dear  to  Cato  and  so  neces- 
sary for  the  sustenance  of  our  hard-work- 
ing, brawny-armed  Brasserii. 
/*"""  From  over-specialization  scientific  men 
;  are  in  a  more  parlous  state  than  are  the 
Humanists  from  neglect  of  classical  tradi- 
tion. The  salvation  of  science  lies  in  a  rec- 
ognition of  a  new  philosophy  —  the  scientia 
scientiarum  of  which  Plato  speaks.  "Now 
when  all  these  studies  reach  the  point  of  in- 
tercommunion and  connection  with  one  an- 
other and  come  to  be  considered  in  their 
mutual  affinities,  then,  I  think,  and  not  till 
then,  will  the  pursuit  of  them  have  a  value." 
Upon  this  synthetic  process  I  hesitate  to 
dwell;  since,  like  Dr.  Johnson's  friend, 
Oliver  Edwards,  I  have  never  succeeded  in 


[    55    ] 

mastering  philosophy  —  cheerfulness  was 
always  breaking  in. 

In  the  proposed  Honour  School  the  prin- 
ciples of  philosophy  are  to  be  dealt  with  in 
relation  to  the  sciences,  and  by  the  intro- 
duction of  literary  and  historical  studies, 
which  George  Sarton  advocates  so  warmly 
as  the  new  HumanismyUhe  student  will 
gain  a  knowledge  of  the  evolution  of  mod- 
ern scientific  thought.  But  to  limit  the  his- 
tory  to  the  modern  period  —  Kepler  to  the 
present  time  is  suggested  —  would  be  a 
grave  error.  The  scientific  student  should 
go  to  the  sources  and  in  some  way  be  taught 
the  connection  of  Democritus  with  Dalton, 
of  Archimedes  with  Kelvin,  of  Aristarchus 
with  Newton,  of  Galen  with  John  Hunter, 
and  of  Plato  and  Aristotle  with  them  all. 
And  the  glories  of  Greek  science  should  be 
opened  in  a  sympathetic  way  to  ' f  Greats ' ' 

1  Popular  Science  Monthly,  September,  1918,  and  Scientiat 
xxni,  3. 


icntiu     ^^"""1 


[   56  ] 

men.  Under  new  regulations  at  the  public 
schools,  a  boy  of  sixteen  or  seventeen  should 
have  enough  science  to  appreciate  the  posi- 
tion of  Theophrastus  in  botany,  and  per- 
haps himself  construct  Hero's  fountain, 
Science  will  take  a  totally  different  position 
in  this  country  when  the  knowledge  of  its 
advances  is  the  possession  of  all  educated 
men.  The  time,  too,  is  ripe  for  the  Bodleian 
to  become  a  stadium  generate,  with  ten  or 
more  departments,  each  in  charge  of  a 
special  sub-librarian.  When  the  beautiful 
Brooms,  over  the  portals  of  which  are  the 
mocking  blue  and  gold  inscriptions,  are 
once  more  alive  with  students,  the  task  of 
teaching  subjects  on  historical  lines  will  be 
greatly  lightened.  What  has  been  done 
with  the  Music-Room,  and  with  the  Sci- 
ence-Room through  the  liberality  of  Dr. 
and  Mrs.  Singer,  should  be  done  for  clas- 
sics, history,  literature,  theology,  etc. ,  each 
section  in  charge  of  a  sub-librarian  who 


[57] 

will  be  Doctor perplexorum  alike  to  profes- 
sor, don,  and  undergraduate. 

I  wish  time  had  permitted  me  to  sketch 
even  briefly  the  story  of  the  evolution  of  sci- 
ence in  this  old  seat  of  learning.  A  fortunate 
opportunity  enables  you  to  see  two  phases 
in  its  evolution.  Through  the  kind  permis- 
sion of  several  of  the  colleges,  particularly 
Christ  Church,  Merton,  St.  John's,  and 
Oriel,  and  with  the  cooperation  of  the 
Curators  of  the  Bodleian  and  Dr.  Cowley, 
Mr.  R.  T.  Gunther,  of  Magdalen  College, 
has  arranged  a  loan  exhibition  of  the  early 
scientific  instruments  and  manuscripts.  A 
series  of  quadrants  and  astrolabes  show 
how  Arabian  instruments,  themselves  re- 
taining much  of  the  older  Greek  models, 
have  translated  Alexandrian  science  into 
the  Western  world.  Some  were  constructed 
for  the  latitude  of  Oxford,  and  one  was  asso- 
ciated with  our  astronomer-poet  Chaucer. 

For  the  first  time  the  instruments  and 


[   58    ] 

works  of  the  early  members  of  the  Merton 
School  of  astronomer-physicians  have  been 
brought  together.  They  belong  to  a  group 
of  men  of  the  fourteenth  century  —  Reed, 
Aschenden,  Simon  Bredon,  Merle,  Richard 
of  Wallingford,  and  others  —  whose  la- 
bours made  Oxford  the  leading  scientific 
university  of  the  world. 

Little  remains  of  the  scientific  apparatus 
of  the  early  period  of  the  Royal  Society,  but 
through  the  kindness  of  the  Dean  and  Gov- 
erning Body  of  Christ  Church,  the  entire 
contents  of  the  cabinet  of  philosophical 
apparatus  of  the  Earl  of  Orrery,  who  flour- 
ished some  thirty  years  after  the  founda- 
tion of  the  Society,  is  on  exhibit,  and  the 
actual  astronomical  model,  the  * '  Orrery, ' ' 
made  for  him  and  called  after  his  name.1 

1  Among  other  notable  exhibits  there  are  : 

I.  A  series  of  astronomical  volvelles  in  manuscripts  and  printed 
books. 

a.  The  printed  evidence  that  Leonard  Digges  of  University  Col- 
lege was  the  inventor  of  the  telescope  many  years  before  Galileo. 

3.  The  mathematical  work  of  Robert  Recorde  of  All  Souls' 


[59] 

The  story  of  the  free  cities  of  Greece 
shows  how  a  love  of  the  higher  and  brighter 
things  in  life  may  thrive  in  a  democracy. 
Whether  such  love  may  develop  in  a  civi- 
lization based  on  a  philosophy  of  force  is  the 
present  problem  of  the  Western  world.  To- 
day there  are  doubts,  even  thoughts  of  de- 
spair, but  neither  man  nor  nation  is  to  be 
judged  by  the  behaviour  in  a  paroxysm  of 
delirium.  Lavoisier  perished  in  the  Revo- 
lution, and  the  Archbishop  of  Paris  was 
butchered  at  the  altar  by  the  Commune,  yet 
France  was  not  wrecked ;  and  Russia  may 
survive  the  starvation  of  such  scholars  as 
Danielevski  and  Smirnov,  and  the  massa- 
cre of  Botkin.  To  have  intelligent  freemen 

College,  in  which  he  suggested  the  St.  Andrew's  Cross  as  the  sign 
of  mulri plication,  and  uses  symbols  -{-,  — ,  =. 

4.  The  earliest  known  slide-rule  in  a  circular  form,  recently  dis- 
covered in  St.  John's  College. 

5.  The  early  vellum  and  wooden  telescopes  of  the  Orrery  Col- 
lection. 

6.  An  original  Marshall  microscope. 

7.  Early  surveying  instruments,  including  the  great  quadrate  of 
Schissler. 


[   60   ] 

of  the  Greek  type  with  a  stake  in  the  State 
(not  mere  chattels  from  whose  daily  life  the 
shadow  of  the  workhouse  never  lifts) ,  to 
have  the  men  and  women  who  could  love 
the  light  put  in  surroundings  in  which  the 
light  may  reach  them,  to  encourage  in  all 
a  sense  of  brotherhood  reaching  the  stand- 
ard of  the  Good  Samaritan  —  surely  the 
realization  in  a  democracy  of  such  reason- 
able ambitions  should  be  compatible  with 
the  control  by  science  of  the  forces  of  nature 
for  the  common  good,  and  a  love  of  all  that 
is  best  in  religion,  in  art,  and  in  literature. 
Amid  the  smoke  and  squalor  of  a  modern 
industrial  city,  after  the  bread-and-butter 
struggle  of  the  day,  ' '  the  Discobolus  has 
no  gospel."  Our  puritanized  culture  has 
been  known  to  call  the  Antinous  vulgar. 
Copies  of  these  two  statues,  you  may  re- 
member, Samuel  Butler  found  stored  away 
in  the  lumber-room  of  the  Natural  History 
Museum,  Montreal,  with  skins,  plants, 


[61] 

snakes,  and  insects,  and  in  their  midst, 
stuffing  an  owl,  sat  "the  brother-in-law 
of  the  haberdasher  of  Mr.  Spurgeon." 
Against  the  old  man  who  thus  blasphemed 
beauty,  Butler  broke  into  those  memorable 
verses  with  the  refrain  "  O  God !  O  Mon- 
treal!" 

Let  us  not  be  discouraged.  The  direction 
of  our  vision  is  everything,  and  after  wel- 
tering four  years  in  chaos  poor  stricken 
humanity  still  nurses  the  unconquerable 
hope  of  an  ideal  state  "  whose  citizens  are 
happy  .  .  .  absolutely  wise,  all  of  them 
brave,  just,  and  self-controlled  ...  all  at 
peace  and  unity  and  in  the  enjoyment  of 
legality,  equality,  liberty,  and  all  other 
good  things."  Lucian's  winning  picture 
of  this  ''Universal  Happiness"  might 
have  been  sketched  by  a  Round  Table  pen 
or  some  youthful  secretary  to  the  League 
of  Nations.  That  such  hope  persists  is  a 
witness  to  the  power  of  ideals  to  captivate 


[62] 

the  mind ;  and  the  reality  may  be  nearer 
than  any  of  us  dare  dream.  If  survived,  a 
terrible  infection,  such  as  confluent  small- 
pox, seems  to  benefit  the  general  health. 
Perhaps  such  an  attack  through  which  we 
have  passed  may  benefit  the  body  cosmic. 
After  discussing  the  various  forms  of  gov- 
ernment, Plato  concludes  that  "  States  are 
as  the  men  are,  they  grow  out  of  human 
characters,"  x  and  then,  as  the  dream-re- 
public approached  completion,  he  realized 
that  after  all  the  true  State  is  within,  of 
which  each  one  of  us  is  the  founder,  and 
patterned  on  an  ideal  the  existence  of  which 
matters  not  a  whit.  Is  not  the  need  of  this 
individual  reconstruction  the  Greek  mes- 
sage to  modern  democracy?  And  with  it 
is  blended  the  note  of  individual  service  to 
the  community  on  which  Professor  Gilbert 
Murray  has  so  wisely  dwelt. 

With  the  hot  blasts  of  hate  still  on  our 

1  Republic^  Book  vin. 


[63] 

cheeks,  it  may  seem  a  mockery  to  speak  of 
this  as  the  saving  asset  in  our  future ;  but 
is  it  not  the  very  marrow  of  the  teaching  in 
which  we  have  been  brought  up  ?  At  last 
the  gospel  of  the  right  to  live,  and  the  right 
to  live  healthy,  happy  lives,  has  sunk  deep 
into  the  hearts  of  the  people ;  and  before 
the  war,  so  great  was  the  work  of  science 
in  preventing  untimely  death  that  the  day 
of  Isaiah  seemed  at  hand,  when  a  man's 
life  should  be  "more  precious  than  fine 
gold,  even  a  man  than  the  golden  wedge  of 
Ophir."  There  is  a  sentence  in  the  writ- 
ings of  the  Father  of  Medicine  upon  which 
all  commentators  have  lingered,  "f)v 
irapf}  <f>i\av0pcoiriri,  Trdpecrri  ical  ^A-ore^i/iV 
—  the  love  of  humanity  associated  with 
the  love  of  his  craft !  —  philanthropia  and 
philotechnia  —  the  joy  of  working  joined 
in  each  one  to  a  true  love  of  his  brother. 
Memorable  sentence  indeed !  in  which  for 

1  CEuvret  completes  £  Hippocrates.  ParE.  Littre,  ix,  158. 


[64] 

the  first  time  was  coined  the  magic  word 
"philanthropy,"  and  conveying  the  sub- 
tle suggestion  that  perhaps  in  this  combi- 
nation the  longings  of  humanity  may  find 
their  solution,  and  Wisdom — Philosophia 
— at  last  be  justified  of  her  children. 


THE  END 


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